Val
Val is the tertiary antagonist in Outlast 2. They are the leader of a splinter group from the Testament of the New Ezekiel, called the Heretics. Background The outskirts of Temple Gate are littered with notes written through the perspective of Val telling their gradual rift in views between themselves and Sullivan Knoth. Val started out as the chief deacon of Knoth. In fact, a woman named Ruth said that Val had looked at her sexually later on when they were defecting which was apparently not the way they presented themselves to the cult. Initially, they were the foster parent to the children who got sick. Val is shown feeling sorry for them in their journals because they understood that these children though their parents loved them unconditionally. Yet, now they are under Val's care, and Val loves them, and the kids love them as anyone who clings to Val afraid of abandonment. They don't like the killing of the children. They begin to have vivid nocturnal emissions of the Testament's monstrous bloodshed, writing "Our sins find us in our dreams. But my dreams are nothing but the murder of my children. And I wake laughing, and aroused, and often wet with the involuntary lust of sleep. I woke this morning thinking I was wetted with the blood of a child's slit throat. But it was wetness of my own making." These emissions make them question the beliefs of the cult. They say "I feel increasingly this is a message. But nothing holy." Val then digs a tunnel in some remote area where they meet up with people like them who wish to discuss their dreams. These eventually inspire Val to split off from the Testament and form the Heretics, aiming to ''assist ''the birth of the Anti-Christ rather than prevent it like the Testament, due to their love for the chaos and death the Anti-Christ and its apocalypse would bring. Val wanted to embrace chaos and gained a voracious sexual appetite. In their journals it is said Val is like a membrane waiting penetration; they want the voice of whomever they are hearing to consume them. This is a big distinction between Knoth and Val; Val believes they are not hearing a god but something that can have some physical manifestation. That voice excites them and they want to be one with it. Val and the Heretics adopted a new lifestyle and took shelter within a tunnel system in the mines. Story Val and the Heretics are first seen after Blake and Lynn Langermann escape from the Testament. The Heretics recapture Lynn, whose womb is rumored to house the Anti-Christ, and set up a ritual down in their mines to stage her birth. Blake follows, constantly hunted by the feral Heretics, and is eventually captured and taken to Val, whose shown a lustful, predator-like obsession with him. Val shows him their "true face" by smothering their naked body in mud and donning a crown of thorns, distorting their appearance. A tremor lets Blake escape, however, and Val chases him throughout the mines with a torch in hand. Blake finally stumbles across the ritual where Lynn is kept, surrounded by the entire Heretic cult participating in a graphic blood orgy that Val forces him to participate in, raping him. The Testament, ratted out hours earlier by Josiah, raid the mines, however, and presumably kill every last Heretic including Val, ending and winning their civil war. Personality Val is a proudly psychotic, perverse sexual predator whose life mission is to assist in the birth of the Anti-Christ to revel in its bloody, apocalyptic rampage. Val boasts about their wet-dreams of their infant children being gruesomely murdered, and also sexually preys upon Blake every chance they get, at one point raping him. Val also lecherously licks Lynn's body after choking her out, making it very likely they don't see gender. Val sees their own monstrous actions as "the sharing of love", and refers to their underlings as "my loves". Val is lascivious and they make no intentions to hide it. Val also violently abhors Knoth and the Testament's views, and (very hypocritically) insults him for being a rapist and child-killer, although they don't see it as hatred, moreso an embarrassment to God and what inspired them to make the Heretics. Val wants to consummate their relationships with the voice that they hears. They note that the voice is not god but something physical like them but they desire it more than anything. The voice that Val hears is the radio frequency. The fact that Val starts hearing something different than Knoth may also show different reactions to the frequencies. Physical description Val is a well-groomed, androgynous-looking person with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes. In their first appearance, they wear a black priest uniform similar to Knoth's with a cross necklace and black boots, although for the rest of game, they are completely naked and instead smeared from head to toe in mud like the rest of the Heretics, with a crown of thorns and branches. Navigation Category:Characters Category:Outlast 2 characters Category:Deceased characters